


Beatrice's Saviour

by returnbydeath



Category: Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 | Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World (Anime)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:21:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27041920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returnbydeath/pseuds/returnbydeath
Summary: Beatrice had to live through those 400 years outside of our point of view as Subaru.(late arc 4/s2 spoilers)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	Beatrice's Saviour

"Mother, why have you left Betty here, I suppose?" 

The young girl, painfully whispered out these words, clutching tightly on to the one thing she deemed special in this world, no, this universe. She pushed a book with an eerie black cover against her chest as if it were to block her frozen heart.

She sat in solitude within this library, staring with the familiar pale reds and blues of the books on the shelves towards the ground. The chequered black and white flooring, she and the books had already memorised every tiles' unique markings and when she moved about, she often counted how many times she stepped on each tile.

That was to say she did other things other than reading the books her beloved Mother gave her. That was to say she had fun here. That was to say she really loved her Mother.

She wanted to hate her. She's been waiting for hundreds of years. She couldn't dare to count how many in years exactly, it would make her cry. She cried her last a few hundred years ago. She didn't want to be sad anymore and obey her Mother's instructions. To wait for the one who would put her first, the one who would take her outside and have so much fun with her. Beatrice used to smile at the thought.

Truth be told, her future stopped writing itself long ago. Sobs erupting in the room as she woke up to check what was in store for her today, and there was nothing. Nothing at all.

Her beloved Mother had forsaken her.

She had left her for dead, in this world where she knew nothing but the Forbidden Library any longer. 

But Beatrice still put her trust in her Mother, the Witch of Greed, unsuspecting of everything about her. She's a motherly figure, so she must have good intentions for Beatrice. It has to be that way. She can't be forsaking Beatrice. It's not like that. Everything Mother has ever done had good parts for Beatrice too. It's always been like that.

The dam that had been supposedly held for too long broke, oh God it happened too often. Beatrice wished there was a wholly benevolent God who would wipe her tears for her, and take her out.

She wanted to die.

This little spirit, devoid of all hope, untrusting of those who came to seek her out, wished for death more than anything in the world. After all, her gospel, the one that would always work for her, the one that her Mother gave her, had stopped writing itself.

There was nothing left for her to salvage in this world, so she had to pass on to the next. She had no worth in being here anymore, so she began to seek out those who would kill her instead. Those who would free this artificial spirit from her great suffering and finally stop her thinking, stop her doubting the only existence she was sure of. 

"After all, Mother would never lie to Betty."

So she sat down once more, with a book and a cover she recognised, and began to flick through the pages.

This was until she sensed a presence outside the door and straightened herself up immediately. She had finally found someone who had come to help her, someone who was going to--

Free her.

Those oh so familiar mahogany doors burst open, and she was greeted with a rather short man with medium length, green hair. No, she couldn't bear to look any longer. He wasn't the one she wanted. He's not they. He's not benevolent, he wants the knowledge in this library, he doesn't want Betty. He doesn't want anything to do with her, he wants her Mother's knowledge. She won't let him have it, not unless he can beat her by force. Which would be better in the long run.

"Betty is aware that you've broken through Door Crossing by opening every other door in this mansion, I suppose. Despite your smarts, Betty knows why you're here. Now, shoo, before I have to use force."

Beatrice swore she could hear him babbling on about whatever in the world only mattered to him, and a few empty words about how he would save her and she would be his only one. Empty words that she had heard one too many times. 

Purple crystals, reflecting the irregular light in the forbidden library, pointed towards their target. His face scrunched up immediately in fear, cowering out of the doors, recognising the deadly Minya crystals. Just a single touch was enough to crystallize you and end your life immediately. 

Beatrice sighed, letting the crystals fade into used mana particles. 

"What a waste, I suppose. I wish humans wouldn't underestimate Betty."

Sitting back down on her stool, she stared at the doors, suffering a chip from the impact of shutting. Beatrice exhaled once more in disappointment, it'd be another mark, physical or mental, that would last another few hundred years in solitude. 

Don't get her wrong. She had hope, she truly did believe in her Mother when she told Beatrice all those years ago that someone would come and rescue her. She just wanted to keep this place safe. It's the only thing she has left of Mother. She didn't want to forget her, ever. 

"I can bear it, I suppose. They will come eventually... Mother promised."

Slumping down on to the floor, sobs escaped from her tiny, helpless self. 

"...B-Betty wants... someone. Anyone." She stared at the mahogany doors, the things that have kept her trapped here for so long. She could leave, but she never felt like it. On the rare occasions she did, she felt like she couldn't bear it any longer to stay outside and collapsed on her cold floor, crying helplessly to herself, wanting someone to come through.

"Please," Stretching her tiny hands out towards the doors, she yelped. "Roswaal, Ryuzu, Mother... Please. Help Betty." Her butterfly eyes narrowed, the salty tears staining her cheeks with a warmth she wishes she had felt from someone's touch, not her own tears. She didn't want this warmth. She wanted their warmth. Their strength. Their words. Their body. Their comfort. Them. Them. Them.

When will they come?

How long will it take them?

Why does she have to wait in agony, while they dawdle about minding their own business? Why can't they come now and save her? Why does she have to wait all this time? Are they a human? Why a human? Why, a small, fragile human that only lives for 100 years? Why can't they be beside Betty forever, isn't that what she was promised? Why are only humans coming to seek her out?

"I don't... Betty doesn't know anything, I suppose..."

And a year passed. No, two years, no, ten. Twenty. Fifty. One-hundred. Two-hundred. 

"What a profoundly aggravating man you are, I suppose."

"First NPC found!" Pointing towards the little girl, the little spirit that had lived for too long to be in here, lived too long to live properly, he smiled and exclaimed this.

He spoke once more, closing his eyes and approaching her without a care in the world, clearly not knowing her status of anything of the like, "With that cold attitude, you're gonna ruin your cute face. Come on, smile, smile!" He forcefully pushed his lips up to the side with his index fingers. 

"A derisive sneer is the only smile worth giving you," Beatrice says with a straight face, he won't be the one. He's careless and aggravating. A type she's seen too many times.

Without a care in the world, he replied, "Are you mad because I guessed correctly on the first try? I've always been a pretty lucky guesser, I can understand why game masters would want me in all the events, but sorry!" Scratching the back of his head, the boy who had entered the forbidden library without a care in the world mentioned too many words for Beatrice to keep track of, too many words she had never heard before.

For one, ga-y-me ma-ss-tur?

"So, what is this place, anyway?" That settled it. He knew absolutely nothing about where he was or what he was doing here. Beatrice had healed him before, but she didn't expect him to be this irritating.

To ease herself and rid of the irritating attitude of the boy, she proceeded to explain, "Hmph, it's Betty's multi-purpose room, both library and bedroom, I suppose."

"Talk about your token response. Are you one of the manual girls everyone's into now?"

Snapping her book closed and placing it aside with the utmost care, a satisfying click resounded across the open room as her heels hit the floor. "Betty's had just about enough. Time to teach you a lesson, I suppose."

"H-Hey, what are you gonna do?" Backing away, he put his hands in a self-defensive position she had never seen in her 400 years of life. Curious.

"Don't you dare move." Her soft voice transformed into something deeper, and then back to high-pitched, "Anything you'd like to say?" 

"D-Don't hurt me." Sheepishly closing his eyes once more, he put his hands behind his back. Beatrice sighed and put her small hand against his chest, smiling gently as he began screaming, forcefully draining mana out of his body. He collapsed to the ground, and she stared at him with no sympathy.

"W-What did you do to me, you drill loli?" Looking up at her with a frustrated expression, he asked this question.

"I only collected the mana from your body, I suppose. It confirmed that you are not an enemy." Beatrice kept her eyes still on his body as if it was a normal thing for her. She supposed it was, the number of people waltzing in without a clue in the world to what power she could hold. She preferred the ones who actually knew what they were doing here.

Trying to hold his body up with his arms the boy groaned under his breath, "You're not human, are you? And I don't mean your personality..."

She could appreciate that, at least. "It took you long enough to notice, I suppose."

"I take it back... your personality isn't human, either..."

Turning as she spoke, Beatrice exclaimed, "Do not measure a proud, noble being by your standards, human." He passed out afterwards, and she sighed in response. Beatrice wished some humans weren't so fragile, so they could hold their own and actually be able to confront her. No one would be coming to get him. That means she has to take him back to his guest room.

"Even unconscious, he's aggravating, I suppose."

She submitted to having to do it. After all, she didn't want a bug laying around in her library until he woke up. It'd be a pain to step over him to get to the other bookshelves. She might slip.

Opening the doors and seeing the sunrise break through the library for the first time in the library, she couldn't help but smile a little. However, she stared back at his body and instantly frowned. Gripping his hand, she dragged him out, only to be seen by a blue-haired maid, one of which she didn't know. A few years ago, no, sorry, a couple of hundred years ago, she knew the maids' names, but she doubted they were the same as they were human, humans were frail. They die.

She had to remind herself of that sometimes.

"Miss Beatrice, I will take this useless guest to his room and call my sister. Thank you for doing our job, and I am very sorry to have bothered you." Beatrice sighed at the maid and simply closed the door, hearing grunts of the maid picking up his heavy body and felt no sympathy. 

"Maids will always be the same, I suppose." She sat on her stool, a perfect stool from all that time ago. 

She wondered if he was the one. Unafraid to make fun of her, seemingly friendly but... really strange. Beatrice doubted it, but she couldn't stop hoping.

If not, maybe he can kill her.

A few weeks later brought snow. Happiness could also be in there, but it was subjective for what actually happened that day. Natsuki Subaru was being annoying again. After that big Mabeast incident, he's just going to brush it off and enjoy himself? What kind of carefree existence is he? Beatrice could never figure him out, and that's why she was so captured by him. No, she couldn't be captured by him. After all, he was a pitiful existence. Had he come beyond the Great Waterfall? He didn't know who Satella was, so he couldn't be from anywhere in this world. Everyone knew the Witch of Envy, the one who had brought havoc on to the entire world, and the story had been passed down from generation to generation. Beatrice had heard her name brought up too much, and Beatrice was there for the disasters. She hated it.

She had built a snowman with Emilia, that half-elf lookalike of Satella that no one seemed to like. She was quite airheaded, Beatrice believed. But she was nice for who she was, and she wished people didn't judge off appearances so much.

About a month later, Natsuki Subaru was to head off to the Capital, Lugnica, with Emilia and Rem for the Royal Selection. It's not as if Beatrice cared if he was gone, she would just sort of miss his daily visits with her in the library as she was so bored of reading all those books there and she had nothing to do at all. Him teasing her and her teasing him was one of the best parts of her day, as much as she hated to admit it. She's too stubborn. Why did Mother raise her this way?

He came back a few weeks later. She didn't know why, but it felt like an eternity to her compared to the 400 years she had spent here alone. So much had happened in those few weeks, the Witch Cult had come to the village and the mansion. They were trying to get to Emilia, as she'd come back. Apparently, Emilia and Subaru had an argument, and Subaru wouldn't be coming back any time soon. Beatrice had sighed and resigned herself back to reading books and staring at the blank pages in her gospel lovingly, like before. She didn't want to go back to crying again and she wanted to have fun in the days he was here, in the days he was still alive.

Beatrice herself wasn't so sure why she was so fixated on him. He was a human like the rest, but he had kept insisting on seeing her. He broke through her Door Crossing ability like it was nothing and said hello like it was nothing to say to an artificial spirit like her, an extremely special case with extreme power. She could mana drain him again like that time, but she just talked to him, no matter how much it seemed to irritate her on the outside, she longed for more interaction. She craved human contact, she was starved of it from 400 years ago. But she didn't want to get too close to him, or she'd lose him, and she'd go back to being alone. It was better if she didn't get involved.

After all, he needs to be the one that kills her. So he needs to resent her. Maybe he'll do it out of pity if she asked. To free her from her suffering.

Subaru had come back, with a sleeping girl on his back. According to him, she had been a victim of Gluttony's authority and is now in a vegetative state, unable to age, excrete or do any living things. There was also, two maids she had never seen before. One was Frederica and one Petra. 

She didn't know why she had to care. It was just, in those moments, she cared more than anything else. She wanted to live, but the gospel was telling her she had to die. So she had to follow because it was all she had left to hang on to of Mother, of her life, of what she wanted to live for. It was all too strange that the thing she wanted to live for told her to die. She would commit suicide if she could. Who thought about making spirits such miserable creatures that they can't even kill themselves? It's stupid. Beatrice always thought that. If the gospel wanted her to die, why didn't life give her the ability to kill herself? She had tried it before, but anything she tries to do to herself doesn't work. 

So she has to ask him to kill her before she goes insane and breaks her contract with her Mother. Natsuki Subaru is gentle and forgiving, he must feel sympathy towards her for being alone for so long, right? So, he'll agree to kill her.

That's what she thought until he approached her amongst the fire in the mansion as all the books burnt around them, the malodorous scent of wood burning wiping away her thoughts. She saw the burn marks all over his body, the burnt cloth on his classic tracksuit, him resisting the urge to squeal as his skin flayed in the extremely flammable area, burning away to a crisp. 

"Choose me, Beatrice." He wasn't concerned for himself.

He wanted her. She wouldn't be his first, but he'd be there for her always, and it'd be even better than before. Even so, she found herself unable to take his hand. She cried and cried to herself, realizing that this whole time she had just been pitying herself. Beatrice can blame him all she wants, pointing fingers towards the boy who didn't come for her sooner, leaving her here for 400 years. She could scream at him and wail about all the hardships she's had, how long she's lived without him, why he only appeared for her now.

But he just reached out his hand and asked her to choose him, not choose the stupid they that she had been obsessing with for way too many years. She had curled herself into an endless cycle of pitying herself every time someone entered the room, letting the light in for Beatrice to see, but she rejected it entirely. It happened too many times, and for once she thought that maybe it was okay for him to have her not be his first. 

She wanted friends.

She wanted him, to choose her. Because she'll choose him. 

Beatrice took his hand, and let him hug her for the first time, patting her back as she cried into his chest, letting go true screams and wails that she had held on to for too long. 

He's hugging her even now, as she sits on his lap and smiles, recalling the happy moments they've had together. And she's so happy. Happier than she ever was with Mother, but she doesn't regret anything anymore. He took her outside and showed her everything, But, she doesn't care about the quick expiry of human life anymore. Because she knows that when he dies she'll remember the time she's had with him forever. 

She smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this is super jumbled and it seems a bit bad compared to my other fics. It's something I wrote quite quickly and is mostly just a mini character study of Beako. Thank you for reading anyway!


End file.
